Fullness (7): Colossians 3:18-4:1: God’s Fullness in our Homes
- Rev Norman Cameron

We have been looking together at the theme of Fullness as we have it in Paul’s marvellous little letter to the Colossian church. We have seen that the fullness of God dwells in Jesus Christ the Son of God. As we trust in Jesus what happens is that his Spirit dwells within us and something of the fullness of Jesus begins to flow into our lives (Col.2:10) and we begin to experience life as it was designed to be by God. According to Col.2:13 we are “made alive with Christ and all our sins our forgiven.” From this point we truly worship God and our lives take on a new orientation. Where before God was irrelevant now he is central to our lives; where before God’s word, the Bible, was boring now it is fascinating. As the fullness of God comes into our lives we begin to see differently and think differently and God’s priorities more and more become our priorities and we truly worship him in all of our lives.

Paul in this letter as in all his letters follows a pattern of looking at theology, what we believe about God and ourselves, and from that he moves to the outworking of our theology. He moves from belief to behaviour, thought to practice. This is how life works, this is how we live as people whether we are Christians or not. How we think affects how we behave. Right thinking leads to right practice, wrong thinking leads to wrong practice. As we make Christ central in our lives he will begin to change our behaviour from the inside out. The Christian faith is about change – about God changing us and shaping us into Christ-likeness and this impacts our lives at the deepest levels and certainly at the level of our personal relationships.

In the passage before us today Paul turns his attention to our relationships, especially relationships in the home. If Christ is not real in the home he is not real to us at all. If Christ does not impact how we relate to our spouses and our children and our parents then our faith is not working. But if we have a real relationship with Christ, then the fullness of that relationship will impact and hopefully bless the other relationships we have.

Paul here looks at three different sets of relationships - husbands and wives, parents and children and masters and slaves. I want to focus on the first but let me say a quick word about the final pairing of masters and slaves. In Paul’s culture slavery was a given. Paul here addresses Christian slaves and their attitude to their work and their employers. He wants them to be obedient and he wants them to do their work as unto God, not just for their human master.

Whether we are slaves or in an ordinary working relationship the Christian principle is that we do our work as if we are doing it for God. If Paul says this should be the attitude of the slave how much more ought we to work with such an attitude. Masters also must behave in a fair and just way to their slaves, or in our case our employees. Col.4:1 says “Masters provide your slaves with what is right and fair because you know that you also have a Master in heaven”. We will be accountable for how we dealt with those in our employment.

Now Paul is not making any comment on the rightness or wrongness of slavery. He is simply dealing with the current culture, there was slavery but he is seeking to take that culture and show people how to live Christianly within it. Commentaries say that Paul writes here about slaves because the slave Onesimus is going along with Tychicus to deliver this letter and the letter to Philemon, Onesimus’ master who was part of the Colossian church.

So whether we are an employee or an employer we can take the principle here and apply it to our situations. If we are an employee do we do our work to the best of our ability? Do we work as hard when our employer’s eyes are not on us as when they are on us? And for those of us who are employers, do we pay a fair wage, do we exploit our workers, do we ask more of them than is fair and reasonable because we are greedy? How do your workers view you knowing that you are a Christian? Would they say you are a good employer, fair, just, even generous. Or do you have a different reputation which will colour their attitude not just of Christians but of church and of Christ himself. If the word of God is dwelling in us richly then we will see a positive impact in our workplace.

But for the rest of our time I want us to consider what Paul says about home life. How do we as Christians relate to each other in our marriages and family lives. As we look at v.18-21 a number of questions arise. What does Paul mean by submit here? If Paul was writing in our culture would he use different words for the culture of the 1^st century viewed the place of women very differently to the place of women in the 21^st century where we have women prime ministers and presidents, lawyers and doctors. Are men and women not equal and is this idea of submission not only out of date but actually offensive to modern ears? So there are a lot of issues here.

A. Paul’s culture. Firstly let us have an appreciation of the culture that Paul was writing in and to.

1. It was a patriarchal culture – Women did not have votes. The father of the home had legal authority. It was also the father’s duty to guard the welfare of those under his authority, wife, children, slaves, and it was their duty in turn to show him total obedience and deference.

2. Women usually did not receive any formal education except in domestic things.

3. In contrast to what we call the nuclear family the ancient household consisted of father, mother, children, slaves, unmarried relations, extended family. Sometimes brothers with their families lived under the same roof. Such a large group needed some kind of ordering and the accepted pattern was that all came under the authority of the father of the house. The Romans encouraged this and saw it as necessary for the good running of homes and of society.

However the Romans and the Greeks viewed Christianity suspiciously and as a threat to the family especially with the thinking of Gal.3:28 which says that in Christ all are one and equal, men, women, Greek, Jew, slave or free. This could be viewed as a threat to the clearly defined roles and order of the Roman family. So it was necessary for the Christian leaders to provide some guidance as to home life and how it was to relate to the social norms of the day.

B. Christian culture

So if this was the culture Paul wrote in did he change anything with regard to how Christian families should relate to each other? Well at one level he did not change the overall structure but at another level he did. His starting point is Galatians 3:28 – the equality of men and women. How will this impact his culture? In what he writes here we see he keeps the order of wife submitting to husband, children to parents and slaves to masters. But in each relationship he introduces something new, he introduces rights and responsibilities “in the Lord”. The wife may be asked to submit but the husband is called to an even higher duty – to love. Children are called to obey, but the fathers are charged with the command not to provoke or embitter their children. Slaves are to obey but their masters are to do what is right and fair. The duties and commands laid upon the authority figures is a new perspective to Paul’s culture. We cannot underestimate the importance of this.

Some married for love in Paul’s day but many married simply to provide children and heirs. Some had a loving relationship, but many did not and many could say of their wives at best “she never gave me any reason to complain”. The wife was not regarded as an equal, she was viewed not just as weaker but as inferior. But Paul, as we have seen in Gal.3:28, views male and female as one in Christ and standing on a level footing before God. This was Paul’s starting point.

Why then does he use this word submit? Well it must be read in the context of the next line - it is submission in the context of the husband’s love. Therefore it cannot be a tyrannical submission. Also the Greek word submit according to one commentary “does not convey some innate inferiority but is used for a modest, co-operative demeanour that puts others first. It was something expected of all Christians regardless of their rank or gender…. The verb implies a voluntary submission.” The submission is voluntary, and in the context of the husband loving his wife and wanting what is in her best interests.

C. Submission & Headship in christian homes

But why use the word submit at all and does it apply today? He could have used it partly because it was the traditional order of the culture but Paul as we have seen did challenge the order of the day on the important issue of equality, for him men and women were equal in God’s sight. This was not the accepted view. To better understand the use of this word it is helpful to turn to a parallel passage in Ephesians 5:21-33 where Paul says a little bit more about the marriage relationship and something that transcends culture.

Paul again argues for a voluntary submission, in the context of the husband’s love – “husbands love your wives” (v.25). But note he says “Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” Paul is saying that just as Jesus is the head and has ultimate authority over and responsibility for the church so this is the relationship that husbands and wives are to have.

So the headship that the husband exercises is to be exercised in the style of Christ’s headship of the church– it is not an overbearing, thoughtless, abusive headship as some husbands sadly show. Rather it is loving, servant like and sacrificial. “Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…v.28 husbands love your wives as your own bodies…and v.29 husbands love your wives as Christ does the church by feeding and caring for it. The love of the husband for his wife is to be shown in the way Christ loves the church. When this happens the wife voluntarily and gladly respects her husband for he is sacrificial, caring and looking out for her interests. It is submission to a loving leadership. So the marriage relationship is a reflection of how Jesus deals with the church.

Let me give you another important verse in 1 Cor.11:3 in this regard. “Now I want you to realise that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man and the head of Christ is God.” Here again we have this idea that the head of the woman is man, but there are two new thoughts here. That the head of the man is Christ and the head of Christ is God. Here we see that marriage is not only a reflection of how God deals with the church but it is also a reflection of the relationship within the godhead itself. The headship that a husband shows is similar to the leadership of God the Father to the Son. Father and Son are equal but the Son voluntarily submits himself to the Father’s will, to the Father’s leading. Similarly the wife submits to her husband as the servant leader. They are equals but respecting their differences.

This pattern is not just cultural but it is creational. It is in the essence of the godhead and it flows from Genesis right the way through to today. The Fall did not establish headship and submission, as some think, but it twisted it and turned it into domination and manipulation.

Therefore, headship is not a right to control or to abuse or to neglect. (Christ’s sacrifice is the pattern.) Rather, it’s the responsibility to love like Christ in leading and protecting and providing for your wife and family. And submission is not slavish or coerced or cowering. That’s not the way Christ wants the church to respond to his leadership and protection and provision. He wants the submission of the church to be free and willing and glad and refining and strengthening. In other words, what Ephesians 5:21-33 does is two things: It guards against the abuses of headship by telling husbands to love like Jesus, and it guards against the debasing of submission by telling wives to respond the way the church does to Christ. (J Piper)

So we argue that headship and submission is for all cultures and all marriages for it is a creational principle, reflected in God’s understanding of Christ and his relationship to the church and within the godhead itself.

D. Practical Implications

1. A marriage, and certainly a Christian marriage should be marked by the following qualities generally, mutual submission, love, sacrifice, servanthood, and specifically with the husband showing leadership and protection for his family and the wife showing respect for her husband.

2. Decisions should for the most part be taken together and worked through together as a team but where there is a dilemma and an ultimate call needs to be made the husband should take that responsibility. Husbands should not shirk hard decisions but engage and take responsibility.

3. Where a husband shirks responsibility, makes bad decisions, is abusive or domineering I think he forfeits the respect of his wife and her submission is not willingly given.

4. Where a spouse is not a Christian we should seek to win over our spouses by living graciously, patiently and respecting them. But where we are asked to do something that goes against our Lord’s expressed will we are to obey the Lord over men or women.

5. Fathers need to be aware of their key spiritual influence in the home. Carl Beech who runs a Christian outreach to men in England writes “Statistically when a man comes to faith it is about 90% likely that he will lead his whole family to Christ. For women it is only 17% likely that the whole family will come to Christ”.

6. Fathers need to be especially patient with their children. Col.3:21 says “fathers do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged.” It is hard as a parent to raise kids today. There are so many ways kids can self destruct and we want to be protective. It is a fine balance between leading and allowing some freedom for the child to learn lessons themselves. But our leading must never become domineering or bullying. Fathers need to be engaged in raising the family – too many opt out and abdicate responsibility and escape to sport or work.

7. The book of proverbs assumes that the home, not the temple is the primary place of moral formation and nurture. We are reminded here that the family is primary place where our faith is lived out and where we shape the next generation.

May God help us to be holy families, for holy families make happy and healthy families to the glory of God.